My dear spider, Ophelia.

Part 2

Unassuming and lost, burrowing deeper into a hole I dug, you found me.

The walls grew thick with threads and webs, some hanging loose from the ceiling catching and weaving themselves into my hair and clothes.

They'd stick to each curl no matter how many times I washed my hair. My finger could feel the slight change in texture; the feather light, airy threads tangling into rough curls.

When it started, you lived in the corner. You'd watch me as the light from the window gleamed off your eyes. You'd never move always in the corner; you'd feel it every time I'd moved, shifting to match and keep me in sight.

I used to twitch when I met your eyes, my fingers would try to curl and clench and my eyes could never meet yours. So instead I looked at you. The orange and yellow swirls that dotted your back, stark against black hair. The orange,yellow, and red stripes which wrapped around your legs, broken up by the shiny black of your hair.

Eyes black and unyielding, bright against the black of your hair. I could not hold your gaze, but I admire you all the same, Ophelia.

Then, you started to weave, spreading from the corner to the walls, to the ceiling, to the floor. I had painted the walls white only weeks before you found me, but the smoothness of the white paint was rendered useless when you began to weave.

The first few threads just bumps along the walls, a sign that you had moved, Ophelia, even if I had not seen.

As they grew in number, I began to feel the walls each day. Memorizing each thread and its place, telling new from old and old from new. You gave something smooth and bleak life, something deprived of a true existence, a life. The roughness of your threads when my fingers ghosted over them, the elaborate way you slowly began to coat the walls, and the comfort I took in the fact that you were growing and weaving, moving, even if I remained stationary.

When you had covered the walls, the ceiling began to change too. For hours I used to stare at the ceiling, seeing the same off-white popcorn grain everyday wishing it'd be more.

Though, it stayed the same everyday no matter how many times my eyes traced it, and when my eyes grew tired, I'd reach out and try to grasp it. To feel something real, hoping again and again that I was real too. I would have never grasped it, if it wasn't for you, Ophelia.

You covered the ceiling in your web trailing your threads in the most intricate of designs. You changed the ceiling with every thread you laid, altering the grain from uniform popcorn to a wonderful web. Desperately, I tried to touch it but I still could not reach it.

The next day, threads began to hang loose from the ceiling, low enough that I could grasp them from the floor. Feather-light touch met feather-light fabric. I turned to you in the corner I'd never seen you move from and looked in your eyes finding them filled with a kindness I never deserved.

I didn't twitch when I met your eyes anymore, only finding the kindness and thoughtfulness that you showed me. You continued to make new threads when they got tangled in my hair and clothes detaching from the ceiling, or when they stuck to my skin wrapping around my hands and arms until any movement would tear them from the ceiling.

I used to apologize every time, for ruining your web, for making you work harder, for using your kindness, but everytime I met your eyes I only found kindness. Never did I find judgment or annoyance. So, I started to feel grateful that I would never be without you. When the sun shone on my hair and clothes, they'd gleam with your threads.

You knew and you listened, and for that I started to love you, Ophelia.

You had brought this room to life and continued to feed into it. You had given me your thread and kindness asking for nothing in return. I wished that I could repay my debt, but I only added to it with every hour I spent admiring the ceiling and running my fingers along the walls.